Introduction

Cisco Elastic Services Controller (ESC) is a Virtual Network Functions Manager (VNFM), which performs lifecycle management of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs).

The Cisco Elastic Services Controller (ESC) promotes agility, flexibility, and programmability in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) environments, and offers comprehensive automated lifecycle management capabilities. By design, Cisco ESC is built as an open and a modular system. It provides a single point of control to manage all aspects of VNF lifecycle for generic virtual network functions (VNFs) in a dynamic environment. Drawing on industry standards and open APIs, you can control the full lifecycle of all of your virtualized resources, whether using Cisco or third-party VNFs, allowing you to choose best-of-breed industry solutions.

  • As part of the Cisco Orchestration Suite, ESC is packaged with Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) and Cisco NFV Orchestrator (NFVO) bundle. This is available within Cisco Solutions such as Cisco Managed Services Accelerator (MSX).

  • As a Specialized Virtual Network Function Manager (SVNFM), ESC tightly integrates with the Cisco Mobility VNFs.

  • ESC can also be utilized as a Generic Virtual Network Function Manager (GVNFM) to provide lifecycle management for both Cisco and third-party VNFs.

Supported Virtual Infrastructure Managers (VIM)

ESC supports lifecycle management of VNFs on OpenStack, VMware vCenter, vCloud Director, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and so on. For more details, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.

New Features and Enhancements in 5.3

This section describes the features added in Cisco Elastic Services Controller Release 5.3:

  • Migrating the Monitoring Agent—ETSI NFV MANO and NETCONF support migrating the monitoring agent to enable ESC to control recovery and scaling operations. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller ETSI NFV MANO User Guide and Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide.

  • Specifying the D-MONA Monitoring Agent—ESC supports specifying the D-MONA monitoring agent using ETSI interfaces. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller ETSI NFV MANO User Guide.

  • Resetting the Monitoring Rules for D-MONA—ETSI NFV MANO allows you to set the D-MONA startup time after a reboot. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller ETSI NFV MANO User Guide.

  • ETSI Volume or Software Image Size—ETSI NFV MANO supports mebibyte-based image size. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller ETSI NFV MANO User Guide.

  • VMware vCloud Director Support—ESC now supports installing Cisco Elastic Services Controller on VMware vCloud Director (vCD). ESC supports only vCD version 9.7.

    For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.

  • Disk Space Enhancement—The ESC baseOS disk space is increased from 30 GB to 40 GB. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.

  • vNIC Interface Update on CSP—ESC supports vNIC interface and interface extension updates for Cloud Services Platform (CSP). For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide.

  • Migrating or Redeploying VNFs on CSP Cluster—ESC supports migrating VNFs/VMs from one CSP to another within the same cluster. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide.

Cisco Elastic Services Controller Bugs

For a complete list of open and resolved bugs for this release, use the Cisco Bug Search tool.

Open Bugs

The table below lists the open issues in the Cisco Elastic Services Controller 5.3 release.

Table 1. Open Bugs in Cisco Elastic Services Controller 5.3

Bug ID

Description

CSCvt47503

Custom LCS script execution can fail (Text file busy)

CSCvv71494

VNF monitoring can be lost when DMONA connectivity is lost across monitor migration

CSCvv80458

ETSI monitoring migration can get stuck in PROCESSING state when leader owning destination faults

CSCvv67797

VNF (in service error state) back-to-back monitoring migration requests can leave VMs unmonitored

Resolved Bugs

The table below lists the resolved issues in the Cisco Elastic Services Controller 5.3 release.

Table 2. Resolved Bugs in Cisco Elastic Services Controller 5.3

Bug ID

Description

CSCvu31667

After Inflight service update failure, subsequent update puts VMs in ERROR and Service in ACTIVE

CSCvu47790

ESC bash history records curl command containing credentials

CSCvu54856

AA ETSI VNF VimConnectionInfo updates do not replicate on follower nodes (instantiate will fail)

CSCvu56333

Rollback service update fails after inflight service update failure

CSCvu68722

ESC A/A Geo leader switchover due to leadership loss

CSCvu68738

A/A VM failure may not generate subscribed ETSI fault notification

CSCvu68742

A/A Service update can fail (deployment resource not found)

CSCvu78895

BGP can lockup

CSCvu79151

ESC VCD deployment day0 ISO file is not deleted when deployment is deprovisioned

CSCvu81603

ETSI: VNFM in-band created VIM connector may not be in-service before instantiate is sent

CSCvu83838

SNMP traps not sent when multiple ESC component status changes

CSCvv03122

ESC sends callback instead of event to ETSI component for VM_MANUAL_RECOVERY_NEEDED

CSCvv07758

AA leader escmanger can deadlock in standby mode on initial cluster deployment or failover

CSCvv09163

VNF can become stuck in PROCESSING state when modify operation attempted across A/A switchover

CSCvv16180

[SMF-SVI] Vulnerabilities detected on ESC using tenable IO scan

CSCvv25105

HEAL API Request should fail if the grant from NFVO does not include removeResoruces

CSCvv26501

There's an issue with grub2 in all versions before 2.06 when handling squashfs filesystems ...

CSCvv56626

Alias feature in SnakeYAML 1.18 allows entity expansion during load

CSCvv57444

ETSI: include "resourceTemplateId" in Grant Request for ResourceDefinition of removeReources

CSCvv57604

jackson-databind before 2.9.10.6 serialization gadgets and typing

Cisco Bug Search Tool

Bug Search Tool (BST), the online successor to Bug Toolkit, is designed to improve our customers' effectiveness in network risk management and device troubleshooting.

BST allows partners and customers to search for software bugs based on product, release, and keyword, and aggregates key data such as bug details, product, and version. The service has provision to filter bugs based on credentials to provide external and internal bug views for the search input.

To use the BST to search for a specific bug or to search for all bugs in a release:

Procedure

Step 1

Go to http://tools.cisco.com/bugsearch.

Step 2

At the Log In screen, enter your registered Cisco.com username and password; then, click Log In. The Bug Search page opens.

Note 

If you do not have a Cisco.com username and password, you can register for them at http://tools.cisco.com/RPF/register/register.do.

Step 3

To search for a specific bug, enter the bug ID in the Search For field and press Return.

Step 4

To search for bugs in the current release:

  1. In the Search For field, enter a keyword and press Return. (Leave the other fields empty).

  2. When the search results are displayed, use the filter tools to find the types of bugs you are looking for. You can search for bugs by modified date, status, severity, and so forth.
    Tip 

    To export the results to a spreadsheet, click the Export All to Spreadsheet link.

See Bug Search Tools & Resources on Cisco.com. For more details on the tool overview and functionalities, check out the help page, located at http://www.cisco.com/web/applicat/cbsshelp/help.html

Accessibility Features in Cisco ESC

For a list of accessibility features in Cisco ESC 5.3, see Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) on the Cisco website, or contact accessibility@cisco.com.

All product documents are accessible except for images, graphics, and some charts. If you would like to receive the product documentation in audio format, braille, or large print, contact accessibility@cisco.com.

Related Documentation

The following documents are available for Cisco Elastic Services Controller:

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller ETSI NFV MANO Guide

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller Administration Guide

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller NETCONF API Guide

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller REST API Guide

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller ETSI API Guide

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller Deployment Attributes

You can access the documents at:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/cloud-systems-management/elastic-services-controller-esc/tsd-products-support-series-home.html.